American television and film screenwriter, producer, director, and comic book writer J. Michael Straczynski celebrates his 64th birthday on July 17, 2019. Throughout his decades long career Straczynski has worked on comics for top publishers, penned psychological thrillers and sci-fi epics for the big and little screen and remains a prolific writer across a variety of media. But how did this inventive creator get his start?
Joseph Michael Straczynski was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and graduated from San Diego State University double majoring in psychology and sociology, with minors in philosophy and literature. While attending the university, Straczynski wrote so many articles for the student paper, The Daily Aztec, that he was jokingly referred to as the “Daily Joe.” In his early career, Straczynski wrote several plays including an adaptation of Snow White for Performance Publishing and The Apprenticeship for the Marquis Public Theater. He later became the on-air entertainment reviewer for KSDO-FM and wrote several radio plays before working as a scriptwriter for the radio drama Alien Worlds. At the same time, he penned articles for the Los Angeles Times, San Diego Magazine, The San Diego Reader, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, the Los Angeles Reader, TV-Cable Week, and People magazine.
Straczynski spent five years co-hosting the Hour 25 radio talk show, during which time he interviewed such luminaries as John Carpenter, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison and more. Venturing into animation, Straczynski worked on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, She-Ra: Princess of Power, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors and The Real Ghostbusters. He also worked on the television series The Twilight Zone and was nominated for a Writer’s Guild Award for his adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for Nightmare Classics. During the early 1990s, Warner Bros. hired Straczynski to produce the space opera Babylon 5 as the flagship program for the new Prime Time Entertainment Network. Straczynski wrote 92 of the 110 episodes, as well as the pilot and five television movies. Over the years, Babylon 5 won two Emmy Awards, back-to-back Hugo Awards, and dozens of other awards.
Throughout this time, Straczynski also worked on such comics as Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Rising Stars, The Amazing Spider-Man, Supreme Power, Strange, Fantastic Four, Thor, Bullet Points, The Brave and the Bold, Superman: Earth One, Wonder Woman, Before Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan, The Flash and Terminator Salvation: The Final Battle. Under his own imprint, Joe’s Comics, he penned the Midnight Nation miniseries, the illustrated fantasy parable Delicate Creatures, Ten Grand and Sidekick. On the big screen, Straczynski wrote the psychological drama Changeling starring Angelina Jolie, the apocalyptic horror film World War Z starring Brad Pitt, the martial arts thriller Ninja Assassin and the horror film Underworld: Awakening.
Through his Studio JMS, Straczynski released the science fiction series Sense8 that later received a straight-to-series order by Netflix. The series was praised for its representation of LGBTQ characters and themes, winning the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Drama Series. The second season received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series (One Hour), and two nominations by the GLAAD Media Awards for Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding TV Movie or Limited Series.
Although Straczynski has been semi-retired from the comic industry for some time, the longtime creator continues to pen novels and plays while his impact as a screenwriter in the world of animation and films endures to this day.